Charlie sighed. ‘It was, as we all know, a controversial trial. The case against him certainly wasn’t watertight. There were no signs of a struggle in his flat, and the murder weapon was never found, but he proved to be an unreliable and volatile witness, and I’m sure we all remember the time he jumped out of the dock and tried to attack me while I was giving evidence.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, that’s history. The jury found him guilty and the judge ruled he should serve a minimum recommended term of twenty-five years. That should have been the last we ever heard of him, if his case hadn’t been taken up by a firm of human-rights lawyers who specialize in dealing with so-called miscarriages of justice.’
It was ironic, I thought, how Charlie seemed to spit out these last words, as if he couldn’t understand how these lawyers could act in such a low, underhand manner, even though he knew, as we all did, that a huge miscarriage of justice had indeed taken place. But that was Charlie for you; he was driven by a sense of his own superiority.
‘The problem is,’ he continued, ‘they were successful and, now Corridge is out, the case is live again, and it’s only a matter of time until attention focuses on us. To be honest, there have been rumours floating about that we may have been hiding something, but I’ve always managed to keep a lid on them with the threat of legal action. However, it’s going to be open season now, particularly with my involvement.’
‘I’m afraid Corridge might come after us,’ said Louise. ‘I think I might have seen him drive past my house.’
‘I thought I saw him the other day too,’ said Marla. ‘On the King’s Road.’
I hadn’t seen him, but the thought that he might come after me made my stomach turn over. I remembered him from the trial, bug-eyed and wild, screaming abuse at us, being wrestled to the floor by half a dozen struggling prison officers.
‘If any one of us hears anything from him, or suffers any harassment, we have to report it immediately,’ said Charlie, who was still standing at the head of the table. The man who always had to be in charge. ‘And remember, we’ve all got to keep to the same story we told all those years ago. This weekend we’re going to go over everything, so we’ve got it watertight. Now, has anyone been approached by the police to make a new statement?’
I shook my head, as did the others.
‘What about the press?’
‘I was approached a couple of years ago, when all this stuff about a miscarriage of justice first started surfacing,’ said Marla. ‘I kept to the script and told them that Rachel never turned up that night. Period.’
‘Christ,’ said Luke. ‘I never thought it would come back to this.’ He glared at Charlie. ‘We should have gone to the police straight away rather than listening to you.’
Charlie gave him a withering look. ‘Don’t be stupid. You were the one in bed with her, Luke. You would have been the prime suspect. I don’t remember you arguing about it back then.’
Although Luke was twice Charlie’s size, and had always had a reputation as a bit of a hard man, his only reaction to the dressing-down was a grunted, almost childlike, ‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘How do you know? You were off your face when you went to bed. We all were. Any one of us could have killed her.’ Charlie looked round the table then, his eyes settling on me for just a heartbeat too long.
I looked away. An image of Rachel laughing appeared right at the front of my mind then. Perfectly clear. God, she’d been so pretty.
‘I’m not a killer,’ protested Luke, banging his fist on the table, his actions again reminding me of a big child, and it struck me, rather unkindly, that he was a perfect cliché for the male equivalent of the dumb blonde. ‘I’m just an ordinary bloke who got involved in something … something horrible.’
‘Is it safe to be talking in here?’ demanded Louise. ‘If anyone had a bug …’
‘It’s safe,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ve got an advanced bug-finder and I’ve run it over the room twice today. Anything that’s said in this room stays between us.’
Louise took a gulp of her wine and put the glass down on the table, her eyes scanning the rest of us, like a lawyer surveying a jury. ‘Well, I want to know who killed her, because it wasn’t me. And whoever it was has ruined my life.’
‘That’s not the purpose of this meeting, Louise,’ said Charlie. ‘The purpose is to make sure we all go back to our lives knowing we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet.’
‘You had a motive, Charlie,’ said Luke, draining his glass and refilling it with wine. ‘Corridge beat the shit out of you because Rachel told him you’d tried it on with her. Apparently, you were pretty pushy with her.’
Charlie’s face reddened and he glanced across at me. I remembered Rachel telling me about it. It had happened at the house the three of us shared, although I’d been out that night. She was really angry when she told me about it the next day, claiming that Charlie had pawed her breasts and tried to kiss her. She said he was like a rooting dog and she’d had to slap him to get him to stop, although she admitted she’d been hopelessly pissed at the time. I confronted Charlie after that and he’d been hugely apologetic. He claimed he was hopelessly pissed too, and that he’d thought she was up for it.
I got him to make a grovelling apology to Rachel, which she seemed to accept. Except clearly she didn’t, because at some point during the next couple of days, she told her boyfriend, Danny Corridge, what had happened and when he next turned up at the house he battered an unsuspecting Charlie, punching him to the living-room floor before laying into him with a series of kicks until the two of us finally managed to pull him off. I always remember Rachel saying, ‘He’s not worth it, baby’ to Corridge as she ushered him out, leaving a dazed, bleeding Charlie lying there humiliated, tears in his eyes. The comment infuriated me at the time because I could see that a part of Rachel actually enjoyed the cruelty of the whole spectacle. To be honest, it still infuriates me now.
For a second I saw the depth of Charlie’s humiliation in his eyes. Then he turned away. ‘I may have had a motive, Luke, but it wasn’t much of one, was it? Kill a woman because her boyfriend had assaulted me. You, however, had the opportunity. And others here had the motive too. You had some big arguments with her, Karen, if you recall. You did too, Louise. And I remember that screaming-match-stroke-bitch-fight you had with her, Marla. You hit her hard, and made some pretty ugly threats—’
‘Oh, bullshit,’ snapped Marla, her dark eyes hard and angry. ‘We had a fight, yes, and I slapped her a couple of times, but that’s a hell of a lot different to caving her head in with a hammer.’
‘How do you know it was a hammer?’
‘Oh, fuck you, Charlie.’
‘Look,’ said Charlie, exasperation in his voice. ‘It doesn’t matter who killed her. It’s in the past. It’s gone. And if we all stick to our story, then we’re home free.’ He sighed. ‘Now, shall we eat dinner?’
2
So, what can I say about Rachel Skinner? Well, as you can probably tell by now, she wasn’t the easiest of girls. But she was fun; she was full of life; and she had moments of real kindness. When I lost my grandma, a woman I was very, very close to, Rachel took me in her arms on hearing the news and stroked my head as I cried on her shoulder, telling me that everything was going to be okay. I remember being surprised that she could be so kind, and we ended up talking deep into the night.
But she was a volatile girl too, capable of ferocious rages, like the time she fought with Marla. The argument was about nothing really, but there’d always been a rivalry between Marla and Rachel – I think Marla saw all women her own age as potential rivals – and, as was so often the case in those days, there was drink involved. One minute they were laughing; the next they were attacking each other like savages. Marla had the better of her, but as we pulled them apart, it was Rachel who was screaming and spitting, with utter hatred in her eyes.
Rachel was also manipulative and selfish. On more than one occasion, she slept with someone else’s boyfriend
(and girlfriend), and it never appeared to bother her in the least that she was potentially wrecking a relationship. And probably most destructive of all, she dated a violent thug like Danny Corridge, pandering to his worst side as she showed him off like some kind of twisted status symbol.
But in the end, whichever way anyone cares to look at it – and I can assure you I’ve looked at it many, many times – Rachel Skinner did not deserve to die.
The night it happened will always be a blur. It wasn’t a party so much, or even a gathering. It was just a crappy video night at the other guys’ house. We’d rented out Jurassic Park, of all movies, because Luke and Crispin wanted to watch it on the new surround-sound system Luke had put in at the house. In the end, no one really paid much attention to it because we were too busy smoking dope and caning the booze, which, as I’ve mentioned before, wasn’t that unusual for us.
It was Rachel who turned up with the ecstasy and the coke, which she’d got from Corridge. She knew enough not to bring him in the house – after all, she wasn’t even meant to be going out with him still – but she was in a generous mood that night because she had a hell of a lot of gear on her and she was doling it out like candy.
We got absolutely wrecked. I was seeing Crispin at the time, and I have vague memories of me and him kissing and making out on one sofa, and Louise on the other sofa making out with Luke, though I’m still not sure about that last bit, because Louise denied ever touching him the next day, and anyway, Luke ended up in bed with Rachel that night. I do remember Rachel and Marla doing a sexy dance together, and Charlie trying to get involved, which was typical of him, and being rebuffed, which was also typical (at one time or another he tried it on with all of us girls, without any real success), and of us all having a real good laugh – all rivalries and petty squabbles having faded in the drug-and drink-fuelled haze – before finally the night descended into the deep, empty blackness of memory loss and sleep.
And then the noisy, bright awakening on Marla’s bedroom floor – the inside of my mouth dry as a bone – with her calling out for me to wake up, panic in her voice, the tears streaming down her face.
‘It’s Rachel. She’s been hurt …’
3
Dinner was Parma ham with figs, followed by a rich chicken stew served with vegetables and crusty bread. It would have been delicious but, to be honest, I wasn’t hungry. I’ve never been much of a foodie and I also tend to lose my appetite when my routine gets broken and I’m in places I don’t want to be. Like Charlie Williams’ dining room.
I also hadn’t realized – even though I should have done – what an uncomfortable night it was going to be. With the possible exception of Charlie, no one wanted to be there and it showed on all their faces, just as I suspect it showed on mine. I was also disappointed that Crispin hadn’t shown up. Not only did it make the purpose of the weekend redundant if he wasn’t a part of it, but in truth he was the only one I wanted to see again. Crispin had been my first true love, and we’d been together for over a year at university. Who knows what would have happened if Rachel hadn’t died? Maybe we’d still be together now, with a couple of kids and a house in the country. But the pressure caused by the circumstances of her death, and our collective part in it, had destroyed any hope of that.
The only way I could tolerate the evening was by drinking and, as I refilled my glass from the rapidly emptying bottle of Pinot Grigio in front of me, I noticed my hand was shaking. Marla noticed it too and raised an eyebrow – a gesture I ignored.
Charlie was asking Louise about her kids, in the way a politician does – oozing fake sincerity – while harping on about his own offspring. It angered me that he seemed to be taking all this in his stride, as if the whole thing hadn’t really affected him at all. Luke just looked bored, and Marla was pointedly ignoring the conversation.
She looked at me. ‘Charlie told me about what happened with you, Karen. I’m very sorry for your loss.’
How many times had I heard those words, always uttered with the same desperate sincerity? Far too many, and yet they never ceased to hit me like hammer blows. My loss. It was so much more than that. It was a huge black hole in my life that would never be replaced. And yet a part of me was disappointed that Marla hadn’t even heard about it – after all, I’d kept tabs on her life – although really I shouldn’t have been. Marla had never been that interested in me. We’d been part of the same circle, but of all of them she’d been the most distant, and even now I still felt vaguely intimidated by her.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It was a few years back now.’
She sighed. ‘Still, it stays with you.’
How the fuck would you know? I thought.
The others had turned my way now, putting me on the spot.
‘Yeah, I heard about it too,’ said Luke, who looked relieved to have something to talk about. ‘Really sorry.’
Louise didn’t say anything. She’d heard about it at the time and had sent me flowers along with a note saying that if I ever needed to talk to someone, she’d be there for me. I’d never called, and she hadn’t called me, but at least it was a gesture of sorts.
‘I hope you don’t mind me telling the guys, Karen,’ said Charlie. ‘I just thought it best they knew.’ At the time he’d bought me flowers too, and had even made it to the funeral.
‘No, of course not,’ I said, fiddling awkwardly with my wine glass. ‘But you know, I’d rather not talk about it.’
Everyone nodded to show they understood, and predictably the conversation immediately ground to a halt.
Thankfully, we were all rescued by a loud knocking on the front door.
Charlie stood up. ‘Let’s hope this is Crispin.’
Luke got to his feet as well, looking pleased. He and Crispin had been good mates back in the old days, even though they were both very different people. Crispin the thoughtful, creative one; Luke the hard-drinking, hard-playing jock. I’d once asked Crispin why he and Luke got on so well, and he’d said it was because, unlike a lot of people, Luke was straight down the line. What you saw was what you got. The answer had never really satisfied me because my memory of Luke was different. He might not have been the brightest of sparks, but he could be ruthless and calculating when he needed to be. After all, he’d been the one who’d stolen Danny Corridge’s car and used it to transport Rachel’s body.
And then there he was in the room. The man who’d been my first love. Taller than I remembered, and still in possession of the lean, rangy features that I’d been so attracted to, but now they made him look thin and unhealthy. His face was lined and drawn, and his eyes had lost their spark. This was someone who, like me, had been affected deeply by the events of that dark and terrible weekend all those years ago.
Luke embraced him with real passion. ‘Mate, good to see you. It’s been too long.’
Crispin smiled, but it looked forced. He kissed Louise on both cheeks but seemed to flinch slightly as Marla moved in on him, greeting him with two kisses. She’d always fancied Crispin. I think he was a challenge to her because he’d never shown any sexual interest where she was concerned, and I wondered if she’d try it on with him this weekend. I didn’t trust her.
I stood up and caught Crispin’s eye over the other side of the table. His face seemed to light up a little and I knew then that the connection we’d had was still hidden away there somewhere. I came round the table and we embraced awkwardly. ‘Good to see you again, Crispin,’ I said, and he nodded and said it was good to see me.
I wanted to say more, but it would have to wait. The others were watching us and I had no desire to share my thoughts with any of them. I sat back down.
Charlie asked Crispin if he wanted anything to eat.
‘I don’t feel like eating,’ he said, sinking into a spare seat next to Charlie and directly opposite Marla. ‘I need a drink.’ He grabbed a wine bottle and filled up his glass. ‘I’m sorry I’m late, but I had a visit today.’
That got everyone’s atten
tion. ‘From whom?’ asked Charlie. ‘The police?’
Crispin shook his head. ‘No. They were private detectives. They said they were working for Rachel Skinner’s father.’
Charlie frowned. ‘Brian Skinner’s a powerful man. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s asking his own questions about the murder, now that Corridge has been acquitted, but he’s got no reason to suspect any of us.’
‘Well, clearly he does,’ said Crispin, taking a big gulp of wine. ‘Because these guys were very aggressive with me. I told them that I’d told the police everything I knew at the time and I didn’t have anything to add, but they said that now the police had reopened the case, attention was focusing on us, and that we were all suspects.’
‘Jesus, this is all we need,’ said Marla. ‘More people snooping around, digging up dirt.’
‘They said that they knew one of us had killed Rachel and covered it up. They even named each of us as suspects and said they’d get to the bottom of it eventually. They offered me the chance to cooperate now, saying it would save me a lot of trouble later.’
‘And you didn’t tell them anything?’ said Luke.
‘Of course not. But they really didn’t want to take no for an answer. I wasn’t at home, either. I was in a café, so it was obvious they’d been following me. Even when I got up and left, they followed me.’ He shook his head, looking flustered. ‘I literally had to run off.’
‘That’s harassment,’ said Charlie, striking the table. ‘You can sue them for that. I tell you, if they try that with me, I’ll have them in court in a second.’
‘There’s no way they followed you here, is there?’ asked Louise.
Crispin shook his head. ‘No, I was careful.’
‘They came to see me, too,’ I said in the silence that followed. ‘Yesterday, at home. They were waiting for me outside when I got back from work. I told them the same thing Crispin did – that I’d said all I knew at the time – and when they started to get heavy I threatened to scream. So they left.’
Dead Man's Gift and Other Stories Page 13